When I was on vacation this past week, I knew I was going to be away from my day job, so I asked one of my colleagues at work if she could help with a project while I was gone. After I asked my colleague for help with this project and she said she would help with this project while I was gone, I didn’t have to worry about it getting done. That’s because I trusted that she would take care of it. I know I can depend on this person and that she is trustworthy.
When we ask for God’s help, do we feel this same way about God? Do we think of God as someone who is dependable and trustworthy? If we think of the person in our lives who we trust the most and we think of the person in our lives who we trust the least, where does God stand in that ranking? Our second reading today shows us that when it comes to faith and our relationship with God, trust is a must.
Since faith is often misunderstood and mischaracterized, let’s first talk about what faith is not. There are some who may try to portray people of faith as people who are unintelligent or who are irrational and who refuse to open their eyes to scientific reality.
Unintelligent and Irrational – Instead of faith and reason being opposed to one another, there are intellectual giants such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas who have developed a strong foundation in our Catholic tradition of faith and reason working together.
Faith in God is not irrational. Instead, faith goes beyond the rational taking us further than reason alone can take us. The Catholic author Peter Kreeft said, rational “arguments can bring you to faith in the same sense as a car can bring you to the sea. The car can’t swim; you have to jump in to do that.” We see this truth about faith at work in our own loving relationships. There is no other way to know and to relate to another person than through faith. When we know a person only by what we can objectively verify about that person, you’ll never get to really know a person this way and by living this way, you’ll end up living a very lonely life. Can you imagine trying to fact check or objectively verify everything a person says before you trust them and believe them? That would be a very impractical and exhausting way of living that would result in you being a very lonely person. Not only that, we’d miss out on seeing the full reality of who a person is if we limit ourselves to only accepting as truth about the person those aspects of the person and what they say that can be objectively verified.
Scientific reality – While science is great and scientific advancements have benefitted our lives in many ways, the scientific method will give us only a certain limited type of knowledge that can be gained through experimentation. The creator of the universe is not an object to be dissected, put under a microscope, measured, analyzed, and experimented on.
Now, that we are clear on what faith is not, what is faith? Our second reading today from the Letter to the Hebrews began with this definition of faith: “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.” The author anticipates that we may want this definition fleshed out more for us to understand what faith looks like when it is put into practice. So, the author goes on to highlight the best example of faith in the Old Testament: Abraham.
By sharing the story of Abraham, we are able to see what faith looks like through the lens of relationship. We are given three examples of Abraham’s faith in God:
a. God leading someplace new
b. God speaking more life into world, and
c. Showing God our willingness to make a sacrifice
God leading someplace new – The first example or faith experience that is highlighted of Abram, who would later go onto be called Abraham, was when God appeared to him and invited him to leave his ancestral home and to go to a place he was to receive as an inheritance. This was a place he had never been to and he didn’t even know where it was. God invited him to make a life altering decision at the age of 75. I don’t know the age of all of you, but what Abraham shows us is that you can become a hero of the faith at any age. He believed God and so he left his home and went off to find the promised land.
Speaking new life into our world – Now, let’s move onto the second example of Abraham’s faith. To understand and appreciate this one, it is important to have the background knowledge that it was the deepest desire of Jewish men and women to have children. Children were seen as the proof of God’s love. Children were seen as the future of the family. Whatever the family had would be passed onto these children. Abraham and Sarah had no children as they were both past the normal age of being able to conceive children and Sarah were sterile. God told him that he and his wife would be blessed with a child when Abraham was 100 and his wife was 90. Today’s second reading tells us that Abraham responded with faith. The reading says this about Abraham, “By faith he received power to generate, even though he was past the normal age —and Sarah herself was sterile— for he thought that the one who had made the promise was trustworthy.” Faith is seeing God as someone we can trust. Sarah then gave birth to a son and they named him Isaac. Abraham was so happy with having his son Isaac as a gift from God. In fact, Abraham may have been a little too happy with this gift from God.
Willingness to sacrifice for God – God wanted to see which Abraham loved more, God as the giver of the gift, or Isaac the gift. For the third experience of faith, God asks Abraham to take his son only beloved son, Isaac, and to kill him, offering Isaac up as a sacrificial burnt offering to God. So, Abraham whose age has to be well into his 100s at this point, takes Isaac along with wood and they come to a mountain. Abraham asks Isaac to carry the wood up the mountain while Abraham takes the fire and the knife. As they are hiking up the mountain, Isaac and Abraham have a conversation that went something like this, “hey, Dad, you know that burnt sacrifice you said we are going to make on the alter on the mountain, well, where is the sheep we are going to sacrifice?” Abraham responds, saying to his son “God will provide the sacrificial offering.” So, they get to the designated spot on the mountain, and Abraham builds an altar there and put the wood on top of the altar. Next, Abraham ties his son Isaac up and places him on top of the wood on the altar. Then, Abraham pulls out the knife to kill his son and right before the fatal moment, God’s messenger tells Abraham not to do it. God was pleased to see Abraham show that he loved God the giver of the gift than the gift of Isaac.
So, this faith stuff is all well and good for Abraham, but what does all this have to do with us? The story of Abraham speaks to our current life. Just as Abraham’s faith begins with God taking the initiative, the same is true in our lives. Our faithfulness is built on God’s faithfulness.
Did you catch what Jesus said in today’s Gospel reading? Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart also be.” If we turn the expression around and view it from God’s perspective, where is God’s heart? God’s treasure is us. God has gone all in on us, because God has faith in you. More than anything else, God’s treasures you and me above everything else he has made. That’s why he came here to become one of us. He offered himself on the cross for us. God became a human to save humanity. Not just to save the pope, not just to save the pastor, not just to save the person sitting next to you, but to love, help, and save you.
The same God who came to Abraham desiring a profound relationship with him, comes to us and desires a profound relationship with each of us. What God asked Abraham to do in offering up his only son as a sacrifice. That was just a prefiguring or a preview of what God planned to do for us. Just as it was the God the Father’s will for Abraham to offer up his only son, Isaac, as a sacrifice, it was also God the father’s will to offer up his only son, Jesus, as a sacrifice for us. Just as Isaac was asked to carry the wood up a hill that would make the sacrificing of his life complete, so to Jesus was asked to carry the wood of his own cross up the hill of Golgotha that would make the sacrificing of his life complete. Just as it looked like Isaac’s death seemed certain but he went onto live, so too it looked like Jesus’ death seemed certain, but he went onto live.
What God did with Abraham and Isaac, God desires to do with and for us.
The three examples of faith we heard about from Abraham show us three ways we can grow in our faithful relationship with God: Let God lead us someplace new, be open to God speaking life into our world, and show God our willingness to make a sacrifice.
Go someplace new – Anyone who has been in a loving relationship like a marriage for more than a minute can tell you that a relationship is not all about one person writing the future place their relationship will go alone. The other person in the relationship might have something to say about what place their relationship together goes in the future. Similarly in our relationship with God, we need to be open to what the other person in the relationship, God, wants for our future together. Maybe this a geographic place God is calling you to go to help care for a loved one or maybe God is calling you to go from the place of singlehood to the place of married life.
Speaking new life into our world – This could be God asking a married couple to be open to God bringing new life into the world. This could also that new job opportunity you just heard about that sparked a part of you to life that had been laying dormant for years. Friends, pray, and let God speak new life into your world.
Making a sacrifice – whatever you prize most in your life, maybe it’s a person or maybe it’s your phone, whatever it is, chances are we’ve been focusing too much the whatever it is that we prize most at the expense of focusing on God. God is asking us to make the sacrifice of shifting some of our time and focus away from what we prize most and to shift that time and focus toward God. This will allow us to read scripture to hear what God is speaking to us and it will allow us to pause in prayer to provide space for God to tell us what he wants to communicate to us.
Just as I needed my trustworthy colleague at work to help show me what faith is all about, there is someone in your life who wants a trustworthy, dependable person to help them see what faith is all about. That’s where you come in.
19th Sunday in Ordinary Time Cycle C – August 7, 2022
Mass Readings:
Reading 1: Wis 18:6-9
Psalm: Ps 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22
Reading 2: Heb 11:1-2, 8-19
Gospel: Lk 12:32-48